Short Stories

Anthology Description: In a world of transhuman survival and horror, technology allows the re-shaping of bodies and minds, but also creates opportunities for oppression and puts the capability for mass destruction in the hands of everyone. Other threats lurk in the devastated habitats of the Fall, dangers both familiar and alien.

Written by some of today’s most innovative writers in science fiction, all veterans of the Launch Pad program!

Story description: After the Fall is the first anthology from Posthuman Studios, set in the world of Eclipse Phase, their award-winning roleplaying game. The anthology will be a mix of old and new fiction, including stories by Eclipse Phase favorites—Nathaniel Dean, Jack Graham, Steve Mohan, and Rob Boyle and Davidson Cole. New fiction will feature science fiction rising stars Ken Liu, Madeline Ashby, Fran Wilde, Karin Lowachee, Wesley Schneider, and Andrew Penn Romine.

Written by some of today’s most innovative writers in science fiction, all veterans of the Launch Pad program!

Story description: In “The Caretaker” Renza, the last (genetically-engineered) human must decide between her desires and the fate of all life in her struggle to shepherd what’s left of Earth’s resources.

Anthology description: A fantastic collection of stories of love and intrigue that focus on the trappings of the popular Victorian era, enlivened with fantastical elements and incorporating some noir and detective pieces, by O. M. Grey, Leanna Renee Hieber, N. K. Jemisin, Eliza Knight, Sarah Prineas, Delia Sherman, Genevieve Valentine and many more.

Story description: This founding tale of THE UNNATURALISTS series tells the story of Garrett, the mad Emperor’s guardsman and Princess Athena, the first true witch of New London. The unabridged reprinted version tells the entire tale of their love and sacrifice.

Anthology description: From the Creators of the award-winning steampunk Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series ( Phoenix Rising and the Janus Affair) comes a collection of new adventures from around the world.

The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences investigates the bizarre and unusual, and protects the citizens of the Empire from forces of darkness. Every agent knows that thrusting themselves into danger is part of the job, and may demand of them the ultimate sacrifice. They call on their own inner strength, wits, intellect, and innovations of science and technology.

But is it enough to face the unknown and the unexplainable?

This is Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, a collection of short stories featuring the derring-do of secret agents cut from a different cloth. These original short stories feature the imagination and voices of…

Leanna Rennee Hieber

The League of S.T.E.A.M.’s Glenn Freund

Delilah S. Dawson

Jared Axelrod

Tiffany Trent

Karina Cooper

…and many more!

Travel to the farthest corners of Queen Victoria’s mighty empire and back again to the shores of Old Blighty, unlocking the mysteries of legend, lore, and shadowy societies. Welcome to a world of steam, secrets, machinations and madness.

Story description: A young corporal stumbles on an ancient Chinese curse when he steals a bit of chinoiserie during the burning of the Summer Palace Gardens in Beijing.

“Driftwood.” Scheherazade’s Façade. Michael Jones, ed.

Anthology description: “Gender is flexible and surprising in 12 stories of characters transformed by the trappings of a different sex. …[E]ach one is guaranteed to make the reader question the roles and qualities often assigned to gender and sex. Jones… provides a strong start for Circlet’s new Gressive imprint of works that explore outside the gender binary.”-Publishers Weekly History, literature, and mythology are replete with stories of those who, for one reason or another, disguise themselves as the opposite gender, or are transformed into that which they are not. From Bugs Bunny’s dress-wearing shenanigans, to Mulan’s impersonation of her father, from Tamora Pierce’s Alanna of Trebond, to M*A*S*H’s Klinger, this collection’s antecedents are everywhere. For centuries, readers have thrilled to the tale of Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights. Taken as a bride by a king notorious for executing each wife after the marriage’s consummation, Scheherazade spins stories for him to avoid that fate. But what if someone was not as they seemed? Through tales of magical transformation, cross-dressing, and gender bending, our storytelling heroine postpones her death even as she entertains and enlightens her audience. As editor Michael M. Jones writes in his introduction, “For this collection, I looked for a wide variety of things. First, all stories had to be fantasy. High, low, dark, historical, romantic, urban, mythical–just about anything goes as long as it has those fantastic elements to it. Second, I wanted stories in which the protagonist or other major characters are disguised or transformed, or otherwise challenge traditional gender roles … heroes and villains, warriors and tricksters, drag queens and cross-dressers, cisgendered, transgendered, and everything in-between. The authors who responded knocked the requirements right out of the park.” With stories by: Tanith Lee Sarah Rees Brennan Shanna Germain Alma Alexander C.S. MacCath Paolo Chikiamco Tiffany Trent Melissa Mead Aliette de Bodard Lyn C.A. Gardner Sunny Moraine David Sklar

Story description: The tragic tale of a gender-bending selkie on an island that might be off the coast of South Carolina.

“Resurrection.” Willful Impropriety. Ekaterina Sedia, ed.

Anthology description: The Victorian era is significant for the rise of the middle classes and marked changes in social relationships, both in the home and in wider society, with the proliferation of domestic help and the development of increasingly rigid gender roles. These are romances that chafe against the restrictions of the period, with heroes and heroines who defy social convention, igniting firestorms of gossip. The aristocrats, impostors, social climbers, domestic workers and undercover agents of these stories exist in an authentically lush world, depicted here with telling attention to detail. While most of the stories are strongly realistic, some incorporate elements of fantasy.

Story description: A young woman masquerading as a delivery boy in Victorian London falls out with resurrection men and falls in love with a surgeon’s daughter.

A young woman learns the truth about her father’s grisly death in the branches of their seek-no-further apple tree.

“The Well Keeper and the Wolf.” River. Alma Alexander, ed.

Anthology description: “When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.” —Leonardo daVinci

It begins. Somewhere. An insignificant trickle of water.

And it changes.

And it grows up, and gathers a history, and finds its way into atlases and maps, until it finally reaches the sea, and vanishes into its vastness.

You might think it of no importance. That it does not matter. But you follow where it leads…

Rivers have always been very important to humankind. They’ve been explored. They’ve been navigated. They’ve been called gods. They’ve been blessed and cursed and venerated and used and enjoyed and exploited and polluted since the beginning of recorded history.

They’ve been sung about and dreamed about and followed on epic journeys of discovery. They capitals of empires have risen on the banks of rivers – and so have a thousand fishing villages, and river landings, and water mills.

There is only one River. Really. And it’s all of them. Every river is dfferent – and yet they’re all the same, vast and full of life and death and mystery and history and adventure and quiet dreams.

Full of life. Full of mystery. Full of stories.

Contents:

“The Well Keeper and the Wolf” by Tiffany Trent

“Rites” by Mary Victoria

“Fall” by Irene Radford

“They Are Forgotten Until They Come Again” by Jay Lake

“Scatological” by Deb Taber

“Floodlust” by Jacey Bedford

“Five Bullets on the Banks of the Sadji” by Keffy R.M. Kehrli

“My Grandfather’s River” by Brenda Cooper

“The River” by Joshua Palmatier

“Lady of the Waters” by Seanan McGuire

“Vodnik Laughter” by Ada Milenkovich Brown

“River-kissed” by Joyce Reynolds Ward

“Beyond the Lighthouse” by Nisi Shawl

Story description: In this lead story, the Wellkeeper guards the ancient and powerful source of The River from her former lover, the Wolf.

Anthology description: Bestselling romance editor Trisha Telep brings an exciting new element to the fast-growing sub-genre of steampunk, which bends and blends the old and the new in increasingly popular dark urban fantasies. Young heroes and heroines battle evil, in various forms with the help of super-technological or supernatural powers, while falling in and out of love. Contributors include: Ann Aguirre a bestselling author who writes urban fantasy (the Corine Solomon series from Roc), romantic science fiction (the Jax series from Ace), apocalyptic paranormal romance (as Ellen Connor, writing with Carrie Lofty, from Penguin), paranormal romantic suspense (as Ava Gray from Berkley), and post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult fiction (Razorland and Wireville coming in 2011 from Feiwel & Friends). Tessa Gratton, her debut novel Blood Magic arrives in 2011 from Random House Children’s Books, followed by the companion Crow Magic in 2012. Jaclyn Dolamore is the debut author of Magic Under Glass from Bloomsbury USA. Lesley Livingston is the award-winning author of Wondrous Strange and Darklight, the first two books in the bestselling trilogy from HarperCollins. Frewin Jones is the bestselling author of the Faerie Path series and the Warrior Princess books, among many others Caitlin Kittredge is the author of the Iron Codex trilogy, a Lovecraftian steampunk adventure. Dru Pagliassotti‘s first novel Clockwork Heart was one of the first in the rising new genre of steampunk romance and was named by Library Journal as one of the five steampunk novels to read in 2009. Dia Reeves is the debut author of the critically acclaimed YA Bleeding Violet.Michael Scott is the Irish-born, New York Times bestselling author of the six part epic fantasy series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Maria V. Snyder is the New York Times bestselling author of the Study series (Poison Study, Magic Study, and Fire Study) about a young woman forced to become a poison taster. Tiffany Trent the author of the acclaimed YA dark fantasy series Hallowmere, which was an IndieBound Children’s Pick and a New York Public Library Book of the Teen Age 2008. Kiersten White is the debut author of Paranormalacy, the first book in a new trilogy, which was published by HarperTeen in August of 2010. Adrienne Kress, is the author of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman and Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate.

Story description: The original, abriged version of “The Emperor’s Man,” details the love of Garrett, an Imperial Guardsman, and Princess Athena, and the founding of the Architects.

A charity anthology used to raise money for the Gulf Coast oil spill relief fund, published by Book View Café. The story “Black Gold,” is told from the Fey Prince’s point of view, and details how he first encounters Mara during the Battle of New Orleans.

“The Vampire, The Witch, and the Yenko.” The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2: Love Bites. Trisha Telep, ed.

Anthology description: A wonderful variety of compellingly original vampire stories, many of them wholly unexpected, from award-winning, New York Times bestselling authors. There are typical vampires who would be right at home in a horror story or a gothic romance; historical vampires; contemporary, gritty, urban vampires; fang-in-cheek comedy; boy-meets-girl sweetheart stories (if a little bloodier!); and erotic tales of inhuman passions and midnight pleasures. Look out, too, for stand-alone stories relating to existing series and characters of contributing authors, or stories which develop more fully characters who have only walk-on parts in those authors’ longer fiction. Includes writing by big-name authors such as Jennifer Ashley, Kim Harrison writing as Dawn Cook, Caitlin Kittredge, Diane Whiteside and Eileen Wilks.

Story description: Drake, a vampire masquerading as a classic car mechanic, finds solace in a young witch.